


Maid, Whore or Myth: Brienne of Tarth and Female Agency in Westeros on the Eve of the Second Targaryen Conquest

by Miss_M



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Academia, Canon Compliant, Distant Finale, F/M, Folklore, Gen, Gender Issues, History, Legends, Memory Related, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-21
Updated: 2013-10-21
Packaged: 2017-12-30 01:43:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,699
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1012535
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Miss_M/pseuds/Miss_M
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Five hundred years after Daenerys Targaryen retook the throne of her ancestors, the War of the Five Kings is remembered primarily as the prelude to her conquest of Westeros. What happens to living history and its main actors once they have been reduced to schoolbook trivia, obscured by the fog of ages, distilled by scrupulous scholarly analysis? Why, they live on in papers given at academic conferences, of course! </p><p>Here, a maester in 813 AL discusses what the available knowledge on the so-called Maid of Tarth says about the Westerosi society of canon – and about her own distant-post-canon world.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Maid, Whore or Myth: Brienne of Tarth and Female Agency in Westeros on the Eve of the Second Targaryen Conquest

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers through ADWD. Nada is owned by me except the idea to transform J/B into an in-universe scholarly paper.

Maid, Whore or Myth: Brienne of Tarth and Female Agency in Westeros on the Eve of the Second Targaryen Conquest

_Talk given by Alys Storm, Maester of Bitterbridge, at the 36th Summer Meeting of the Society for Pre-Reconquest Studies, Convened at the Citadel in the Year 813 AL_

 

Fellow maesters, maesters-in-training, honored guests. My heartfelt thanks for your attendance and attention. 

We in this hall know better than most that the so-called War of the Five Kings is not a topic close to the hearts and minds of the general public. At best, noble lords and ladies will recall it on a par with their childhood maester’s scolds, while to smallfolk it is but a few paragraphs skimmed in preparation for their final exams in the Queen’s Schools. Everyday wisdom equates this war with the Long Winter which partially overlapped it, and subsumes both to their aftermath, a new era of prosperity and opportunity. Even to state the fact that the War of the Five Kings effectively ended with the Second Targaryen Conquest (or the Reconquest) of Westeros in 304 AL, and formally ended in the Treaty of the Three Queens in 305 AL, is to reduce this period to a matter of simple arithmetic: five usurper kings replaced by three queens, Seven Kingdoms broken up into the North, Dorne, and the Targaryen Freehold. 

The matter seems simple, not something which warrants closer scrutiny. How much, then, like a knight errant engaged on a noble if possibly futile quest is the maester who endeavors to parse one single aspect of this period in greater depth? 

The aspect on which I wish to focus today is the role of women warriors in Westeros during the years leading up to the Reconquest, and the attitudes toward warrior women in Westerosi society of the period. I must remark right at the beginning that this topic is very narrow in scope, for the simple reason that women who engaged in warfare as knights or men-at-arms were few and far between at this time. Indeed, warrior women have been rare in every period of Westerosi history, for even such illustrious examples as Visenya and Rhaenys Targaryen were in a sense misfits protected from criticism and ostracism by their exalted position. 

Nor were warrior women in the pre-Reconquest period crucial actors in the events in which they participated. Far more prominent roles were played by women in more socially acceptable positions. The most obvious example were queens, of whom, as of their husbands, there was quite a crop at this time. ( _polite laughter_ ) The most famous, not to say infamous, among them was Cersei Lannister, wife to the Usurper Robert Baratheon and mother to two other Usurpers. One may pause to wonder whether a more productive role in society was played by a woman who chose to take up arms in support of the side to which she pledged fealty, however misguided, or by a woman who has justly gone down in history with a scurrilous nickname known to us all, which I shall refrain from mentioning in present company. ( _one of the maesters-in-training sitting in the back of the hall whispers ‘Cersei the Brotherfucker’ in a carrying whisper; speaker glares briefly before continuing_ )

Despite the patchiness of the historical record from this period of civil war, conquest and rapidly shifting alliances, it is evident that social attitudes to women who aspired to the status of knight in pre-Reconquest Westeros were anything but positive and encouraging. Two of the only examples the true existence of which we can verify with any certainty concern the now extinguished Houses of Greyjoy and Mormont. Both Houses were located on isolated islands in the Sunset Sea off the coast of the historical North, before the Treaty of the Three Queens made it again the independent Kingdom of the North. Both Houses were proverbial at the time of the War of the Five Kings as breeding hardy men who made even hardier warriors. Their female scions who took up arms and engaged in warfare on both land and sea were arguably made of even hardier stuff, as they not only took part in warfare, but led bands of warriors and pirates in their own right. 

Female leadership was not, however, proof of social acceptance. Quite the contrary: the women warriors of Houses Greyjoy and Mormont were seen in the rest of the Seven Kingdoms as Northern aberrations, more feral she-bears than women any sane man would want to wed. Death was seen as the only fit bridegroom for such women, and if they were very fortunate it was death in battle, bringing them closer to the chivalric ideal they wished to emulate. In other words, the standards of male warlike behavior did not translate well to these women. Their agency within the constrained circumstances faced by all highborn women in pre-Reconquest Westeros was a matter of constant struggle, a never-ending need to prove oneself worthy of standing shoulder to shoulder with men. 

Other than these two Northern Houses, most examples of warrior women which survive from this period take us from the sunny realm of verifiable fact into the shady realm of song and myth. Numerous folk songs from the late third century AL tell of highborn ladies who disguise themselves as pages or squires in order to follow a beloved lord to war. The love is usually forbidden or unrequited, and never ends well for the woman in disguise. A heartbreaking example would be _The Ballad of the She-Squire_ , whose heroine expires of sorrow after her beloved, who never recognized his clear-faced squire for the lovesick girl she is, is killed in battle. A more scurrilous, and likely realistic, variant would be _The Wench Who Got Passed Around_ , in which the heroine suffers physical and moral degradation once her true sex is discovered. There are also limericks and ditties beyond count about lowborn women who disguise themselves as common men-at-arms in order to avoid the consequences of being an unmarried or widowed woman without means or family connections in a war-torn land. Though they are usually classified as humorous folk poetry by our fellow maesters who study this period from a literary perspective, it must be said that the pain and violence evinced by these nuggets of folk wisdom far outweigh whatever dubious value they might have as sources of merriment.

Last but by no means least significant, we come to the subject of my talk: Brienne of House Tarth, the last scion of that island House in the Stormlands. The general outline of her biography as well as some of the controversial lacunae contained therein are, I trust, familiar to this knowledgeable gathering, so I shall refrain from retreading that ground. Instead, I would like to focus on the ways in which the historical evidence about the so-called Maid of Tarth’s life and times illuminates three issues of central importance to the study of history today: the ideals and reality of knighthood in pre-Reconquest Westeros; the interplay of sex and social expectations; and the very purpose of the study of history. ( _smattering of polite, astonished laughter at this ambitious goal; speaker smiles indulgently_ )

To begin, let us reflect briefly on what the story of Brienne of Tarth can teach us about the theory and practice of knightly virtue in the War of the Five Kings. Sadly, no letters or documents in Brienne of Tarth’s own hand survive, yet the first-hand accounts of contemporaries who interacted with her, or at least composed their memoirs with the aid of reliable witnesses, are unanimous in their emphasis on the Maid of Tarth’s virtue, steadfastness and loyalty to the chivalric ideal of song and more distant history. Yet I shall, I trust, surprise no one here present by stating the blunt fact: chivalry was a word void of meaning at this time. Events such as the notorious Red Wedding suggest the speed with which the very fabric of society and moral norms deteriorated during this most bloody of civil wars. Therefore, the very notion that a woman from a noble House, and not just any woman but the sole heir to father’s demesne, should choose to join the fray as an aspiring knight, is all the more astonishing. 

How do we explain this paradox? Unlike Houses Greyjoy and Mormont, Tarth was not a distant Northern island where behavior considered anomalous in the rest of the Seven Kingdoms could be better tolerated. On the contrary, Tarth’s strategic position on the east side of the Straits of Tarth, its proximity to the Stormlands and Crownlands to the west and to Essos to the east, placed it at the very crossroads of the major cultural and civilizational influences of the time. Yet Tarth itself had more than a little of the sleepy backwater about it, despite its felicitous location. This suggests that the tradition of chivalric honor and virtue, though no more than a frivolous amusement for the highborn on the mainland, may have survived in a place like Tarth, undamaged by later-day cynicism. 

Moreover, we must not forget the importance individual character plays in history. One quality exhibited by Brienne of Tarth on which all of the commentators I consulted are in agreement is her extreme stubbornness. It is not beyond the realm of possibility that a young woman with an indulgent father and a head full of songs may have taken it upon herself to become the equal of Arthur Dayne or Aemon Targaryen the Dragonknight in an age which had no further use for such scrupulously noble figures. 

To my second point. Quite apart from social resistance to and rejection of this alternative model of knighthood, and the spectacle of unrestrained female agency offered by women warriors, the Maid of Tarth was also burdened by another great challenge for a woman: her sex and physical appearance. Sources as diverse as folk poetry, the surviving correspondence of the Baratheon-Lannister court in King’s Landing, and the chronicles kept by the maesters at Highgarden and Storm’s End unanimously describe Brienne of Tarth as uncommonly large, mannish and ugly. One must remark that despite the good work started five hundred years ago by Queen Daenerys Stormborn, Mother of Dragons and Shield of Women, She of Blessed Memory, there is still in this, our more enlightened age no easier or more final way to dismiss a woman as irrelevant than to label her unattractive and man-like. ( _some members of the audience nod and murmur assent, others shift uncomfortably_ ) Whether the Maid of Tarth was verily as ugly as she was described is really beside the point. Had she been dainty and beautiful, that would not have aided her attempt to carve herself a place in the culture of warfare and knighthood either. 

The real issue here was the very basic and indisputable fact of Brienne of Tarth’s femaleness. Not merely her physical sex, but the full complement of social expectations and prejudices which went with it. For evidence, we need look no further than the three names bestowed upon her by contemporaries. 

‘Brienne the Beauty’ was self-evidently meant to be an ironic or derisive comment on her lack of feminine appeal. It brought Brienne of Tarth’s quest for the high ideal of knighthood lost in her world down to the level of a compensatory tactic adopted by an undesirable woman. 

‘Maid of Tarth’ is a name inspired by the same line of reasoning. While it may have offered some protection to a woman who spent most of her recorded adult years in army camps or traveling in the company of dangerous men, the insistence on Brienne of Tarth’s maidenhood also served to underline the idea that only a woman who could not attract a husband – or even inspire base urges in men – could possibly choose a life of knightly pursuit. Her two broken engagements merely fueled such an interpretation of her character and goals. To her contemporaries, Brienne of Tarth was not a person in her own right, but a woman observed, judged and found wanting by men, who saw what they assumed was her attempt to become a man by adopting a man’s style of behavior as but a poor compensation for her failures as a woman. A story still told to children in the area around Bitterbridge, my maester-seat, about the Maid of Tarth’s brief triumph in a melee there underscores this point. The moral of the story, as told to little girls by their septas, is that the only sort of woman who would even consider taking part in a melee is a woman who is no use to anyone, neither husbands nor kings, men all. 

Brienne the Beauty, the Maid of Tarth – those are two names. Let us now examine the third name bestowed on her, the moniker which could not fail to elicit a strong reaction in all those who uttered or heard it: ‘Kingslayer’s Whore.’ If the personal history of Brienne of Tarth is a tale known in bare outline to everyone in this hall, the life of Jaime Lannister the Kingslayer is known in bare, lurid outline to all and sundry, and needs no repeating here. We shall focus instead on what that name and the putative relationship between Jaime Lannister and Brienne of Tarth reveals about pre-Reconquest Westerosi society. 

It may seem curious that one person could have been called during her lifetime such mutually exclusive names as ‘maid’ and ‘whore.’ What may appear at first as a paradox is, however, nothing of the sort. At bottom, both names were an easy way to dismiss the woman to whom they were attached as beyond the social order, and therefore beyond the need for consideration or serious regard. Whether she refused to engage in social interactions based on marriage and family – even worse, to underscore this rejection by taking on the outward trappings of a man’s life – or whether she was rejected in turn by society for her supposed lack of feminine virtue, the end result was the same. Much like the lovesick or besmirched heroines of the folks songs I discussed earlier, neither the Maid of Tarth nor the Kingslayer’s Whore had a place in the world of hearth and hall, tourney and council chamber. 

One must also remark that, while Jaime Lannister is still justly maligned for an act he committed, which the historical record confirms he committed, the so-called Maid of Tarth is mildly maligned and mostly forgotten for an act we cannot be certain she committed. That act was not even the death of a putative king. While many rumors accused her of becoming a kingslayer after the death, under circumstances which still need clarification, of the Usurper Renly Baratheon, Brienne of Tarth never became known as ‘Kingslayer’ in her own right. Brienne of Tarth’s physical sex and her relationship with a man carried far more weight in the eyes of her contemporaries than a murder she may or may not have committed. The death of a king was a fact beyond dispute. The loss of a woman’s virtue was far more difficult to prove, yet the very rumor of it was damning. One need look no further for evidence than the fact that, in addition to Brienne of Tarth, Cersei Lannister is also known primarily and damningly for her relationship with her brother, whereas Jaime Lannister has retained the dread yet impressive and intimidating name of Kingslayer. In historical memory, the man stands alone, an agent in his own right. The women stand only in relation to him, not as their own persons, let alone historical agents.

I would question whether any of the contemporaries who chose to weigh in on this subject had any more proof of the nature of the relationship between the so-called Maid of Tarth and the Kingslayer than we do at a distance of five centuries. There can, however, be no doubt that a relationship existed, and was arguably the pivot of both their lives. One need only consider the fact that the name ‘Kingslayer’s Whore’ casts the entire life of Brienne of Tarth into a single dimension, one defined by a man, to see the impact Jaime Lannister had on her. Whatever agency to chart her own course in life she may have clawed away from the monolithic, male-dominated society of the time was reduced by that name to the dubious agency shared by every tavern girl in the Seven Kingdoms. 

However, what makes theirs an especially interesting case is not merely the fact that Brienne of Tarth’s life is remembered, when it is remembered at all, mostly in relation to a man. What makes this case intriguing is the fact that, from their first encounter in Riverrun until the point at which they both disappear from the historical record, the names of Brienne of Tarth and Jaime Lannister the Kingslayer recur together time and again. Whether as the subject of songs about naked bear-fights and orgies in dark dungeons or as footnotes in numerous court documents and missives pertaining to campaigns which crisscrossed four of the Seven Kingdoms, the constant intertwining of their names and lives suggests that in one way at least Brienne of Tarth exercised more agency than any other woman warrior (possibly than any other _woman_ ) of the pre-Reconquest period. She was not merely defined by a man. She herself defined, to an unrivalled degree, the life of a famous and infamous man, a man representative of his whole period.

I would like to end this discussion by turning to the very issue of history and myth, the points at which they overlap and bleed into each other, and why we study them. Probably the most striking aspect of the story of Brienne of Tarth is its ending. Or, rather, its lack of a fixed ending, marked by dates and circumstances of death. If Brienne of Tarth was seen by her society as little more than an anomaly destined for a paltry and obscure ending, the same could hardly be said of the Kingslayer. However different their experiences in life, in the end these two personages were one and the same, tied together by life and circumstance, two sides of the same coin. For Brienne of Tarth and Jaime Lannister are both mentioned in dispatches concerning the Rape of the Eyrie in 301 AL and the Cleaving of Casterly Rock in 302 AL. After these events, their names vanish from the historical record. The devastating Second Sack of Tarth occurred already in 300 AL, making that island an unlikely refuge. 

We have no way of establishing their fate with any certainty, though numerous theories exist, some of them based more on folkloric fancy than available morsels of fact. The Maid of Tarth and the Kingslayer thus become in the awareness of most who even know of them little more than figures of myth, flat characters drawn in bright colors inside thick, black lines. They become the [Golden-clawed Lion and the Maiden Giant](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1015596), to borrow their monikers from yet another song not fit for the ears of young children. ( _polite titters_ ) 

It is possible they both died in one of the battles and skirmishes beyond count, which continued to ravage the Riverlands well into the beginning of the fourth century AL. Or that they perished during the Cleaving of Casterly Rock, though one wonders why they were not counted among the dead claimed by that cataclysm. It is possible they lived through the Reconquest only to be executed or expire in a cell under the Red Keep, though their names do not appear on the exhaustive and likely definitive lists of all those purged after the Targaryen Restoration, contained in _The History of the Second Targaryen Conquest_ by Archmaester Thimble. One can hardly imagine that Queen Daenerys, She of Blessed Memory, would have passed up the opportunity to make a public example of the man who had slain her own father and his ‘whore.’ 

It is possible – though now we descend into the murky realm of the oral tradition – that they escaped to Dorne, and from there to Essos. From what one knows of Brienne of Tarth’s steadfastness and Jaime Lannister’s penchant for outrageous acts of derring-do, it is just possible to imagine them seeking refuge in anonymity in the very place from which the Reconquest was launched, and which remained the powerbase of the Targaryen Dynasty until the reign of Queen Visenya IV in the fifth century AL. One is also tempted to remark that a couple as unique in appearance as Brienne of Tarth and Jaime Lannister were reported to have been – the ugliest woman and the handsomest one-handed man of their time – may have encountered some difficulties finding anonymity anywhere in the known world. ( _more polite titters_ )

Members of the audience have no doubt remarked that I have not examined any possibilities in which the two did not suffer or enjoy the same fate, in the same place, at the same time. The reason for this is simple: once we have moved out of verifiable history and into the hazy domain of myth, the possibility of separate fates no longer applies. Whether we consider them failed knights or deliciously lurid villains, Brienne of Tarth and her companion demonstrate what a thorny business history can be, whether we try to reconstruct past events or we attempt to extract lessons from them. The point I made about female agency and its limitations in the pre-Reconquest world is a historically valid one. If I may be permitted such fancifulness, I would like to make a final point about the story of Brienne of Tarth and about stories in general, historical ones, mythical ones, and those where history and myth mingle. 

History, as we all know, is the study of change and continuity over time. It consists of stories strung together, a chain of mutually shaping, influencing and determining stories which unfold in time. I would argue that some of our best stories – the richest, the most unsettling, the ones that tell us the most about who we are, were, could have been and may yet be – are like time itself: they have no ending. ( _polite applause_ )

**Author's Note:**

> This fic was inspired by my training as a historian, my experiences participating in academic conferences, my interest in historical memory and what (if anything) the past has to say to the present, and of course my love of J/B; also two wonderful novels which deal with issues of history, memory and (mis)interpretation, _The Handmaid’s Tale_ by Margaret Atwood (the last chapter of which directly inspired the format of this fic) and _The Fall of the Kings_ by Ellen Kushner and Delia Sherman; and Brienne and Jaime’s own musings on this thing called history:
> 
>  _They were the glory of their House. And now they are a sign above an inn._  
>  \- Brienne reflects on the knights after whom the Seven Swords inn in Duskendale was named (AFFC)
> 
> “Most deserve to be forgotten. The heroes will always be remembered. The best.”  
> “The best and the worst.” _So one of us is like to live in song._  
>  \- Jaime tries to educate Loras on the lessons to be drawn from the White Book (AFFC)
> 
> The Blackwood boy would tell him if he asked, but that would spoil the mystery.  
> \- Jaime decides he prefers mystery to history with relation to the eponymous tree at Pennytree (ADWD)


End file.
